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Assume v. Presume

A certain person of my acquaintance ran Speedtest on his cable connection and got this:

Connection Type: WiFi
Server: London, UK
Download: 16.36 Mbps
Upload: 0.97 Mbps
Ping Time: 61 Ms
Click to expand...

Once it gets going, his download speed blows my 2.5Mbps ADSL out of the water, but I'm not very impressed that he has to wait nearly two years for a response.
 
In which case I suppose I had better put other people out of their misery:

61 megaseconds (ping time) = 17 kilohours = 1.9 years (if they had meant "milliseconds" they would have used a lower-case 'm').
 
Being a septuagenarian, I had sussed it, but it took a bit of time to work out WTF he was talking about :=)
@Wallace. Stop knocking us oldies. Your turn will come :=) Having loads of time on your hands is great.
 
Trev said:
Being a septuagenarian, I had sussed it, but it took a bit of time to work out WTF he was talking about :=)
@Wallace. Stop knocking us oldies. Your turn will come :=) Having loads of time on your hands is great.
Click to expand...
A mere youngster compared to Mordrin Mcdonald.
 
I was reading about the Type 45 Destroyer in the paper, and apparently its various gas turbines and diesel generators are rated in milli-Watts.

Another common mistake, even found in serious scientific journals that ought to know better, is (degrees symbol)K. K stands for Kelvin, which is an absolute thermodynamic unit of temperature and is therefore not "degrees" any more than it is degrees V. Room temperature (20 deg.C) is 293.15K.
 
Being picky is what the thread's about. I'd hate to think some casual reader might get the idea that Room Temperature is an absolute value, like the Boiling Point or Freezing Point of Water. Of course, none of them is really an absolute: boiling point varies with pressure, freezing point with salinity and room temperature with the age of your joints.:D

('O' level Grade D Physics-with-Chemistry, 1964)
 
...which is why I chose a datum of common experience and defined it.

I may have made a mistake in citing the Volt as an absolute unit: when we measure voltage it is always relative to a reference point, and without knowing the potential difference between that reference point and the neutral terminal of the Universe it is not an absolute scale. I should have picked current instead.

As an aside, if one could stick an earth spike in the ground and another at the diametrically opposite point and somehow measure the resistance between them, I wonder what it would be?
 
Idon't know the answer, but you could probably measure it in Ohms.

('O' level Pass in Physics 1957, but forgot nearly all of it but am an expert on radar)
 
No. I'm older than that, don't have a beard and don't wear a stupid pointy hat. Other than that, it's a remarkable likeness.;=)
 
I also passed 'O' level physics in 1964, but I remember the grades as being 1-9. I rec'd a 2, but the crowning achievement was grade 1 in maths. Went on to study pure and applied maths at 'A' level but dropped out after a year as times were tough and money was tight. Easy to get a job though!
Brain fade is setting in now but this thread is beginning to stimulate the memory cells.
 
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